For poetry makes nothing happen: it survives
In the valley of its making where executives
Would never want to tamper, flows on south
From ranches of isolation and the busy griefs,
Raw towns that we believe and die in; it survives,
A way of happening, a mouth.

Philosophy is the invention of strange forms of argumentation,necessarily bordering on sophistry, which remains its darkstructural double. To philosophize is always to develop an ideawhose elaboration and defence require a novel kind ofargumentation, the model for which lies neither in positivescience – not even in logic – nor in some supposedly innate facultyfor proper reasoning.

And ruled by dead men never met,By pious guess deluded,Upon the stool of madness setOr stool of desolation,Sits murderous and clear-headed;Enormous beauties round him move,For grandiose is his visionAnd grandiose his love.

The searcher must burn out when he senses that nothing will save him from himself. He is extinguished in the dilemma of having to choose between the unbearable and the impossible. Only in the fire of disillusionment can the last remaining illusions be burned away. With the departure of what is being sought, the search itself becomes the goal and the path flows with a tragic bend into the pain from which it was initially able to turn away.

If I can’t, in spite of all my painstaking art, Carve a Moon of silver for your Pedestal, I shall put the Serpent which is eating my heart Under your heels, so that you may trample and mock, Triumphant queen, fecund in redemptions, That monster all swollen with hatred and spittle.